What a week it has been.
It started with the highly anticipated presidential debate between Vice President Kamala Harris and former President Donald Trump. Who can forget allegations of people eating cats and dogs?
Then there were the preparations for Hurricane Francine and the nervous anticipation of high winds, rain and chance of power outages.
But another big thing happened Tuesday afternoon as I was exiting my nearby grocery store with hurricane preparation items. A man, who looked familiar, entered with his wife.
I was three steps out of the building when I turned around and went back inside.
“Excuse me, sir, did you use to work with the Boy Scouts?” I asked.
“I sure did,” he said, adding, “And you’re Ed Pratt, right? I thought that was you when I came in.”
I had not seen him in more than 20 years. We talked for a couple of minutes and went our separate ways.
After the hubbub of getting my pre-storm materials and watching the debate, I regretted not talking to him more, because I remember and appreciate what he and the other scout leaders did for my son and me.
In the early 1990s, he managed a Cub Scout pack of boys, mostly from my son’s school, Greenbrier Elementary. They were a mix of different races and ethnic backgrounds joining at scout meetings where they shared conversations and learned camping and life skills.
We parents trusted these men enough to leave our children with them for one-to-two-hour meetings, visits to the woods or overnight camping trips. More than anything, though, here were men willing to freely share their time and energy to assist young boys, listen to their thoughts, discuss their issues and show them how to manage disagreements.
And there were other things. On one occasion, my son and his Boy Scout troop spent a week at a scouting area in the woods near St. Francisville. My wife and I were nervous, but we had faith in the troop leaders that they would take care of the boys.
We were allowed to visit him on the fourth day of the stay. His residence, a tent shared with another scout, was a mess that both boys were proud to call home.
When the parents had to leave, our son happily waved goodbye and ran back to his group. We were proud of him.
When we returned to get him, he was tired, sleepy and had tales of fishing, wandering through the woods looking out for snakes and collecting things, all under the watchful eye of his scout leaders.
I remember the night before my son was to enter a Pinewood Derby competition. We had purchased a small block of wood that had to be carved into a hand-size car for the competition. The scout leader made us all promise to have our boys involved. It was a means to get the boys and parents, especially dads, working together.
I got home from work after 11 p.m. the night before the event and spent the next six hours carving this piece of wood into the shape of a race car. I had never done anything like this. My son was happy with his car and put a couple of stickers on it.
At the competition, every car looked better than his. Some were so fancy that the boys carried them in boxes. My son just had his in his hand.
I remember the troop leader smiling at my son’s car and me.
After several rounds of racing with more than 25 cars, my son wound up coming in second place. I remember the scout master nodding to us after the competition. My son had the biggest, proudest smile on his face. “Y’all did it,” the scout master said.
I reflected on that day early Wednesday. I even went into my son’s closet and found his scouting shirt, Pack 318, adorned with its bear, bobcat and wolf patches. Sadly, though, with all that had gone on this week, I didn’t remember the scoutmaster’s name. I called my son, but he couldn’t remember either.
Still, this is a big “thank you” to him and a show of appreciation to the other troop leaders who did great things for boys and helped build stronger bonds between sons, fathers and mothers.